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(Archive) Playfulness

Unlocking creativity in every day life

This project was part of DDW 2021
A playful way to roast toast — © Sophia Schullan

Creativity is a mindset which allows us to produce original ideas. That’s fun... until you don’t do it just for fun. It seems that creativity cannot be forced. That’s a pity since designers need to be creative at all times. Is it possible to outplay that pressure and unlock creativity on demand?

Playfulness – Unlocking creativity in every day life

Playfulness is the antipode to pressure. It means playing for play’s sake. Or, in other words: Doing something just for the fun of it. Playfulness thereby allows the mind to engage in an open, nonjudgemental way with pretty much anything. Therefore it provides precisely the fun-driven mindset that is essential to unlock creativity. That means, in order to have fun with something, all we need to do is play with it. And, in reverse, everything we play with has the potential to become something fun and by extension creative. To practice playfulness I turned my perspective on good old everyday life into a source of inspiration. Changing the angle with which we look at the most familiar objects and routines of our daily life enables us to discover their potential to be fun. For that reason I re-designed some of my personal, most automated, hated or boring routines in a playful manner into something fun to play with. The result of this project are 15 installations built from every day items that show trivial routines from new and exciting angles.

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A playful way to butter toast — © Sophia Schullan

A playful way to do dishes — © Sophia Schullan

A playful way to brew tea — © Sophia Schullan

A playful way to stir a drink